This Scare-Photo is Hilariously Over-the-Top

I just need to circle back to this pressure-cooker story and how badly it was handled in the online press. Specifically, this scare-photo used in The Atlantic Wire just keeps cracking me up — but in a really sad way.

I’d love to know how many readers thought that was really Michele Catalano and her family rushing out of their home as federal officers raid it for possible terrorist activities. The children are an especially unhinged touch.

The photograph is actually by AP’s Charles Krupa and it was taken as police searched homes in Watertown, Massachusetts while the Tsarnaev Brothers were on the loose following the Boston Marathon Bombing. But, hmm, let’s just make it look like the Catalanos as NSA goons raid their home.

You know if the same story and accompanying photograph appeared at Infowars no one would take it seriously, but now that liberals have bought into the world of the conspiracy, it will be taken seriously by far too many people.

It’s just plain irresponsible as a citizen or someone who cares about the truth. Or, you know, someone who claims to care about the truth.

FlipYrWhig

I think it was someone at Roy Edroso’s who pointed out the similarity between the Catalano story and the Annie Jacobsen “Muslims went to the bathroom on my plane!” weeks-long freakout. It’s astounding that people, smart people at that, have this much of a desire to feel besieged and paranoid.

Lady Willpower

Black bagging!

Draxiar

I may be way out of line by saying so but purposely misleading journalism (and outright falsehoods) should have some consequence attached to it. News outlets can spit lies out day after day and present them as fact and no accountability is attached. Any apology or retraction given for faulty material just makes people more suspicious that the original story is really the truth when, in fact, it isn’t. So the lie lives in some form of perpetuity and the facts? PPPFT! The facts get overshadowed.
We should have an OSHA for the journalism world.

nathkatun7

You are not “out of line.” The original lies printed in headlines on the front page tend to stick. Rarely do people get to read retractions which are never printed on the front page in bold headlines.

mrbrink

By the time there’s any correction to be had, as facts change, new information comes to light that negates the original reporting, the narrative and the public perception remains locked in time, back before everything they now believe to be common wisdom was at its most undeveloped. I think it’s by popular media design.

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